What Will You Do If They Come In The Morning? Protect and Defend by any Means Necessary!

In your heart of hearts you already know the answer! You may not want to say it aloud or even whisper it to yourself. But you know the answer as well as you know your own name. In a country where leadership at the highest levels of government seek to stoke the flames of racism and white supremacy for partisan gain without regard to the danger it presents to those who have been historically the scapegoats for real or imagined problems - You know the answer.

When hate crimes against African Americans are on the rise and gun ownership by whites has dramatically increased since the election of the first African American President.

When the new president was elected by playing to the rankest racial demagoguery and who promises to take "our" country back.

When the president uses the bully pulpit to intentionally polarize the nation by encouraging violence against dissenters and characterizing neo-Nazis, skinheads and white supremacists as "good people."

When a rash of extra judicial executions of unarmed African American men, women and children by police officers occur daily.

When local police departments are increasingly armed with weapons and equipment previously reserved for the military and foreign deployment.

When the Attorney General of the United States announces the resurrection of the War on Drugs by returning to the policies of the past that resulted in an attack on the African American community and the mass incarceration of African Americn men, women and children. You know what the answer is! Protect and defend by any means necessary.

Malcolm X said "Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research."

Let us look at our past that we may better prepare for the future.

In 1919, in the wake of World War I, "... black sharecroppers unionized in Arkansas, unleashing a wave of white vigilantism and mass murder that left 237 people dead. The root cause of 1919’s violence was the reassertion of white supremacy after World War I."

The Ocoee massacre November 2, 1920, 50 or 60 African Americans killed buildings and residences burned to the ground. The riot is still considered the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history".

The 1921 the black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma awoke to an unprovoked attack by deputized white mobs who destroyed the entire community (a an area of 35 blocks) and killed at least 300 African American citizens.

The Rosewood massacre January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida. The town was burned to the ground as many as 150 people killed.

What do these events have in common? They were unprovoked attacks by whites deputized or supported by local police departmnets and or the national guard, or witnessed by law enforcement who did nothing. The underlying intent in each case was the destruction of black progress and achievement and the perpetuation of white supremacy. In all cases there were no convictions and no reparations. All of these events occurred during times of political upheaval in which whites felt threatened. All attacks were against black communities whose prosperity was envied by whites and who were insufficiently armed to protect themselves from armed aggression. We must not allow this to happen again.

Deacons for Self-Defense and Justice

The Deacons for Self-Defense and Justice were the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. At a time when civil rights leaders were advocating nonviolent resistence the Deacons armed themselves and backed down the Ku Klux Klan. Their mission was protection and defense. At their peak they had hundreds of members and more than twenty chapters in the South. There are those who argue that it was their armed resistance that made nonviolence effective as a civil rights tactic. We must learn that it is sheer insanity to sit idly by as our enemies stockpile weapons and grow more aggressive with each passing day. We must prepare to defend ourselves.

I do not advocate unprovoked violence. I do advocate armed resistance and self defence. One of the reasons that Deacons for Self defence were successful was because they were comprised of men with military experience many of whom were veterans of World War II and Korea. As of September 30, 2017 we have 2,468,555 living African American veterans.

"The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable." Sun Tzu

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Johnnie Cordero holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Doctorate in Jurisprudence. He is the author of Total Black Empowerment: A Guide to Critical Thinking in the Age of Trump.